The present invention relates to jewelry and, more particularly, to jewelry pieces incorporating precious and/or semi-precious stones arranged in a star-shaped mounting.
FIG. 1 illustrates a prior art star-shaped, multi-pointed precious or semi-precious stone 10. Typically, the star-shaped precious stone 10 is cut from a larger sized raw stone 12 which can be round as indicated in FIG. 1 or square, etc. Such a stone is then mounted in a gold or other precious metal mounting and sold as a pin, pendant, earrings, etc.
There are certain drawbacks to the manner in which the star-shaped precious stone is formed and mounted in accordance with the prior art. First, a larger size stone is needed to create the star-shaped stone 10 of the prior art. These types of stones are more expensive. Second, a considerable amount of labor is required to cut the raw stone 12 to give it the illustrated star-shape. The stone cutting process is not only difficult and labor intensive; but it often results in the breakage of an expensive stone.
The present inventor has recognized that it would be useful, competitively advantageous, and challenging to provide the trade with jewelry pieces incorporating precious stones and/or semi-precious stones which have the appearance of the star-shaped prior art stones, but which are in actuality fabricated of smaller, discrete stones which are arranged together to convey and closely resemble the prior art star-shaped stones.